From Oct. 25 until Nov. 3, the University of North Alabama’s School of the Arts will be performing the hit musical “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” This play is about two con artists working together until their egos end the unlikely pair, turning these swindlers against one another.
“It’s a show that feels like a party with big twists and turns [throughout the story],” says Assistant Professor of Cinematic Arts and Theater Suzanne Reese-Mills. “And I am always looking for audiences to have a lot of fun in the theater.”
While Reese-Mills understands that people can be abrasive to musical theater, she has been searching for a way to incorporate it into UNA’s SOTA since her debut at UNA.
This large-scale, over-the-top musical is her attempt to reintroduce UNA to the mixing pot of cinematic arts, and more specifically, what musical theater can bring to the program as a whole.
This production of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” is almost entirely student-ran, giving them the opportunity for leadership with SOTA in their production.
Reese-Mills states that she is excited to bring students from across UNA’s SOTA together, bringing musicals back into Norton Auditorium.
This will be the first time UNA will be putting on a musical since SOTA’s one-night-only production of “We’ll Meet Again: A New American Musical” on Sept. 8, 2023. However, this will be the first large-scale production musical since Reese-Mills started teaching at UNA.
SOTA’s productions of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” will be on Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 at 7 p.m., and Oct. 27 and Nov. 3 at 2 p.m.
